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@Adira: Thanks for the interesting read. I actually love this topic. It's quite a challenge to balance these things that work for everyone. There is probably no one right answer and whatever you come up with will probably not work for everyone.
It definitely makes you stop and think what will make you happy and what can you do to get to what makes you happy?
I have definitely thought a lot about this since my work drama not that long ago.
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@Adira: I think hellobee ate my response to you... edit: oh it didn't... it just showed up before this comment. haha.
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@Raindrop: HB sometimes gets the thread count wrong, so it won't show that there's a page 2, which is where your reply was because it thinks there are only 39 comments instead of 40, or whatever. It happens all the time. Whenever I notice something like that, I see if there's really another page that's not showing up and then post a message to Mr. Bee in the Help section.
It'd be cool if instead of us all working 40 hours, the standard was to work 8:00 - 3:00 or something - whatever normal school hours are. And that would go for EVERYONE, not just parents.
And then pay us more for working less so we'd still make the same, haha.
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@Adira: Your plan doesn't have a lunch hour!
I guess if you eat at your desk that's fine. I love your plan otherwise. That would be nice. I think I read something that stated your idea. I think it was called something like "women can't have it all" which sound discouraging but I think someone on HB posted it. It talked about if the work place really valued working moms and dads they would have working hours evolve around school hours so parents didn't have to figure out what to do for after school care.
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@Adira: Found it. http://boards.hellobee.com/topic/can-women-have-it-all
"My longtime and invaluable assistant, who has a doctorate and juggles many balls as the mother of teenage twins, e-mailed me while I was working on this article: “You know what would help the vast majority of women with work/family balance? MAKE SCHOOL SCHEDULES MATCH WORK SCHEDULES.” The present system, she noted, is based on a society that no longer exists—one in which farming was a major occupation and stay-at-home moms were the norm. Yet the system hasn’t changed."
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@Raindrop: Yes!! I think I read that article a while ago, which is where the idea came from! Totally agree that making school schedules and work schedules match, it would be so much easier!
I don't know about the lunch hour - I tend to work through my lunch anyway, haha.
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I just read an article in Time magazine this morning, basically, the very last paragraph is the money paragraph (which let's face it, drives business).
"From a business standpoint, covering employee egg freezing makes sense....And it's increasingly clear that it's a financial issue for companies, a way to avoid costly and often less effective in vitro fertilization procedures late on that more than a dozen states already require businesses to cover."
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I think the focus needs to be on equal pay first.
This is a half-assed attempt at "fixing" a gender imbalance in the work force.
I don't agree with it at all.
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@mrsjyw: Totally agree with you about equal pay!
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This article offers an interesting perspective: http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/facebook-apple-egg-freezing-benefits
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@ElbieKay: That is interesting, thanks for sharing! I understand what she's saying, and I totally agree our country needs an overhaul when it comes to maternity/parental leave (and SO many other things...) But I guess my only issue is, as she notes, Facebook and Apple already offer pretty generous parental benefits. This is just an added benefit. It's not as if the entire United States is saying, "OK, we'll give you the option of freezing your eggs in lieu of offering paid maternity leave." I don't really see why this has to be seen as an either/or thing -- like two companies offering egg freezing is somehow going to make it even harder for us to get paid maternity leave or equal pay or more affordable childcare for everyone.
Overall, I do think it's good that it is sparking a discussion about motherhood in the United States and how it's treated by employers. But I don't think Facebook and Apple deserve some kind of condemnation for "secretly" trying to force women to have kids later. The reality is, plenty of women are having kids later for so many reasons -- and not all are job related. I really just can't understand why these companies offering the option to freeze your eggs -- on top of other parent-related benefits, not instead of -- is anything but a good thing.
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@ElbieKay: Thanks for sharing that!
The last part is pretty lame... the said "Apple offers expectant mothers four weeks of paid leave before the birth, and upward of fourteen weeks afterward—these are the exception rather than the standard." this is actually just California's maternity policy but most companies supplement the payments since it gives less than your full salary.
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